Mako Sulphide
by Firefly99
Summary: The story of a scientist, a specimen, and an assistant...the day the project failed.
1. The Periodic Table of the Elements

Mako Sulphide

WARNING!

This fic contains an OC. Those who are allergic to OCs stay away. Those who aren't – don't worry, she's not called Lorinanna Jycinina Sparkleblossom Feathertear and she isn't named after me either. And she does get a little character development.

Can't guarantee she's not a Mary Sue though. I don't think she is, but how many authors have repeatedly claimed that their character is 'not a Mary Sue!1' when really she is? Everyone's perception of Marysuelisciousness is different.

Also contains squicky het pairings (implied), squicky het pairings (not-so-implied), Hojo making crude jokes, Hojo desperately trying to annoy Tseng, Tseng being described as less than godly, Zack, and a relationship between two characters which is meant to be platonic (yes, really) but is probably easier to interpret as something more.

It's also worth mentioning I wrote the first draft of this all at once, so it's hard to break up into chapters. It might seem a tad disjointed.

Well. Enjoy.

* * *

_**PERIODIC REPORT**_

_**Reporting on:** Experiment ID #302-303_

_**Date, time:** 12/05/5044, 17:08_

_**Specimen(s):** #24680 (Homo sapiens), #24681 (Homo sapiens)_

_**Report:**_

Hojo sighed and set down his pen, pondering what exactly to write. Specimen B had changed a lot recently. It was hard knowing where to begin.

Magnesium-grey eyes drifted around the room, settling briefly on a copy of the Periodic Table pinned to the wall. He didn't remember it being there. Perhaps one of the assistants had added it to grant a little, much needed colour – the room was all chemical-burned wooden shelving and concrete slab floor with the faint glow of the mako oxide cylinders providing green, washed-out light, green on grey on grey.

After all, Hojo did not need that table. He already knew each and every element better than he had known his childhood friends – not a property or statistic of any of them was beyond his knowledge. Something about the way they were arranged pleased him, but there was one element on there that had forever bothered him.

A man sometime many years ago, perhaps the greatest genius in years past, had played cards with the chemicals and made the only sure-fire way of arranging them. But not even he could predict one discovery.

Mako, known a hundred years ago as materium. Chemical symbol M. Occupies a place in the table that by all logic should not exist.

It was not a liquid, or a gas, but some kind of cross between the two that scientists had previously thought was only found in the Sun. Its state did not seem to change no matter how it was heated or cooled, but pressurising it worked wonders. It took up a place on the table that did not and could not exist, and so it was printed there, hovering on its own somewhere to the left of hydrogen, forever condemned to be the discard pile of the little card game.

There was a lesson to be learned there. It enforced Hojo's knowledge that it was best to be so different that you cause the whole system to be rewritten.

Hojo gazed upon the Bunsen burner flame licking the air in front of him. Something about it was calming.

Finally, Hojo took up his pen and began to write; his letters harsh spiky italics, his ink black.

_**Report: **Recently I took another glance at the photographs I had taken of the two specimens when I first obtained them one year and three months ago. Specimen A has changed only slightly, mostly mild (although extremely slowed) atrophy from the lack of exercise, but Specimen B is nearly unrecognisable._

Hojo glanced over at the tanks in the corner, insides frosted with crystals of frozen mako oxide. MO³. Jenova enhanced humans could respire with the gas. A pair of dark eyes stared out at Hojo, refracted into a stained-glass pattern, and drifted back into the cylinder. Odd.

The scientist eased himself out of the thick leather chair and headed over to the cylinder, stepping carefully over piles of badly-stored paperwork and heavy, reinforced life-support cables. Specimen A's sedative was not supposed to wear off this quickly. Why hadn't it kept him subdued?

Peering deeply into the smoky heart of the cylinder, he could see Specimen A's body suspended in the semi-liquid MO³. The specimen's hair had only grown past his ears from being shaven off during the initial life-support attachment. It gave him a rather formidable appearance – the ends were frosted in pure mako oxide crystals, giving him a bright green-white halo which stuck out starkly against his ash-black hair.

In fact, Hojo thought, his fingertips spread out against the glass, it was quite unusual for his hair to be that colour. It had no correlation with the pale skin and the sharp blue-green eyes…

His thoughts were interrupted by Specimen A, who began to pound against the glass, sobbing and yelling profanity at Hojo. _I didn't become a scientist to listen to language like this, _Hojo thought, observing calmly that Specimen A's tears seemed a little milky. It was probably time to clean the tanks again.

He sighed.

"I'm glad you're sharing your opinions with me," the scientist said, "but I need silence to work."

Specimen A's eyes shot wide, but not before Hojo had pressed a button on the front of a tank.

A cloud of dirty, yellow-grey gas began to pour into the tank, drifting around the increasingly panicked specimen. He was holding his breath, but was still absorbing the sedative through his skin, and Hojo could see the muscles loosening beneath his naked skin. The specimen finally took an accidental, forbidden breath, and his head instantly lolled forward, eyes closed in unnatural sleep.

Mako sulphide. It was the most powerful tranquiliser known to man, and the only sedative capable of completely numbing a Jenova cell carrier for more than a few minutes. It was the same chemical that was created by casting certain kinds of materia, usually the Seal. Focusing in it allowed the small amount of sulphur present in its shell to react with the pure mako core resulting in a cloud of the gas. No magic, no faeries, no leprechauns, just a phenomenon with a scientific explanation. It was pleasing.

There was something soothing about watching the sedative curl around the tank. It was like a lava lamp, Hojo thought with an inner smile. Eventually, the gas sank to the bottom of the tank, becoming a thick grey smog around the specimen's suspended ankles, and the automated whirr of the filters neutralising and removing the sedative.

Hojo, satisfied all was in order, headed over to Specimen B's tank. His face was pale through the mako-frosted glass, his eyes, the colour of copper sulphate, glassy and far too wide, almost seeming too big for his face, like a baby's. Hojo's observational mind instantly noticed crystals frosted on the end of Specimen B's eyelashes. He decided the specimen did not need sedating as he seemed out of his skull already and unlikely to disturb him in his work.

Picking up a pile of paperwork as he returned, Hojo settled himself back in his chair and resumed writing.

_I do not believe that Specimen B's transformation is directly related to the experiments. It is one of the biological changes that every person on this planet has to go through. Strangely, though, when I first obtained the specimen, his physical age was thirteen years and four months, and now it is nineteen years and two months. The entire face of the specimen has changed shape, his body has grown and developed. Puberty is taken for granted and is heavily documented, but it is nonetheless a fascinating process._

_On the other hand, a biological leap of five years and ten months in one year and three months is completely astounding. The J-cells probably sped up his hormone production._

Jenova cells. Hojo's entire research hinged on that semi-Ancient, that creature found buried in rock and ice so many years ago. He hadn't discovered her, nor had he discovered the power she gave to any human who contained her cells. She was almost a goddess, granting her powers to her followers. But, without the catalyst, the human body would reject the cells.

Mako oxide. For Jenova, it was the stuff of life. Instead of having a respiratory system capable of dealing with only one chemical, she thrived on mako oxide – it released a slow burn of energy many hundreds of times more efficient than the reaction between oxygen and glucose that takes place in human cells. She was capable of that too, but only after being exposed to mako oxide did her cells gain enough energy to grow and develop inside the body of her host, and only then did the host gain her abilities. Interestingly, the respiration produced a slight phosphorescence when in muscle cells, especially in the muscle fibre in the iris of the eye. That was the source of the distinctive, disarming glow in the eyes of the SOLDIERs.

But, of course, Hojo hadn't discovered that. That'd been Gast. And Gast would be the one who everyone would remember as the instigator of the Jenova project, ignoring Lu and the surrogate father Hojo. Because it was Gast's idea, he received the fame and the credit, because the Jenova project was a revolution.

It was also a bit of a mess. Inter-personal relationships had never been Hojo's strong point.

He reckoned he still had Specimen Omega rotting away in a coffin or something somewhere. Did it matter?

He set his pen back down to paper.

_Specimen B has taken on a rather more aesthetic appearance – one that ensues at the end of adolescence in every creature to signify the creature sexually active. It is remarkable how every animal on this planet, even the ones tainted with mako, follow the pattern._

_Reproduction is a very complex process._

_However, I am going off on a tangent. I shall return to Specimen B._

_Specimen B is now far more attractive, even to I, but yet anything can look beautiful to someone who truly understands the complexity of such. All my specimens are beautiful to me. But I digress._

_His face appears more angular, the once rounded cheekbones and nose sharper, the shape of the skull more defined, and the chin becoming rather pointed. Almost all the freckles are gone from his complexion, although this is most likely the mildly bleaching effect of the mako oxide. His eyes have narrowed slightly, the lashes slightly darker and the hair colour has more highlights and variation._

_As for the rest of his body, his shoulders are broader, muscles more developed (although this is probably due to the cell infusions) and the internal reproductive organs fully developed._

_I am a modest man and shall therefore refrain from describing the changes in the specimen's genital regions._

Hojo could not resist a schoolboyish grin at that last sentence. He had made a joke! He could only imagine his assistant's face…

_Instead, I shall take a photograph._

That cracked him up. He had not had a proper laugh for some time. Sighing, he continued.

_Specimen B has been reacting to the Jenova cells with the usual reaction for someone exposed to such high amounts of mako, although a little more intensely than I had hoped. Almost as if he has _Homo terraeus _blood, he appears to be confused – although he lacks the other symptoms (such as the raised, cross-shaped scars and fading colour from the pupil) and the DNA tests found him to be a pureblood _Homo sapiens

_Homo terraeus_. Man of the Earth. The Ancients.

When Hojo had first heard about the Ancients, he had dismissed it as a silly faerie tale – but when he was sent the two remaining Ancients as specimens, he gave up that assumption.

The woman, Ilfalna, had been the most wonderful of the two specimens – sensible, intelligent, and beautiful. Although Hojo believed all his specimens were beautiful, he thought…_more_ of this Cetra woman. He hated himself dearly for falling for his own specimen. Especially as he grew fonder and fonder of her, the way he'd savour, damn it, the feel of her soft skin and those warm, big eyes – and she wasn't even human, she was of a different species, her daughter, produced by mating with a human, was completely sterile like all half-and-half creatures – and yet he'd fallen for her, that strange accent she had as her less-muscular, tighter-set Cetran tongue tried to pronounce Midgarian words as best as possible, long waves of soft, dark brown hair over her sweet shoulders, full, perfect breasts…and she'd been so clever as well, witty and interested in Hojo's work. She'd told him all about the Cetran culture and Jenova's true identity – not an Ancient, but a being with the powers of the Ancients – and he'd, in return, told her about the wondrous things that modern science could achieve. He'd allowed her and her half-human daughter the liberty of clothing, and the liberty of being able to escape from the specimen pods once in a while. It was a cold Easter morning when the lovely not-quite-human had asked if she and her daughter could attend church. He'd sent her with an escort. She had smiled, and waved, and kissed him on the cheek, and had never been seen again. Apparently after the service she'd given her escort the slip.

Hojo hadn't been able to do much except give the escort the sack and hope that wondrous Ilfalna would return to him sooner or later. Or, if she didn't, that she was now living happy somewhere, free from the pressures of scientific research, and that she lived with her daughter who had grown up to be as beautiful as her, and that Ilfalna was proud of her.

As for Gast, Hojo still wished he was rotting in Hell. Pompous, arrogant, inflexible git.

Swallowing his uncharacteristic rage, Hojo set pen to paper. Only the most talented observer would notice he was writing with just a little more pressure than necessary.

_When fully 'awake', the specimen talks of sun and rain and fresh air, and especially freedom. He expresses great concern for Specimen A (the control) and often asks if I plan to hurt him._

_After receiving a shot of pure mako, in particular the 0.15ml jab administered to him at 10:20 AM every day, he appears delusional and intoxicated. In this state he speaks regularly of 'angel's voices' and 'singing', possibly a response to Jenova._

_Today's experiment is to find out if this is indeed true and not hallucinations brought on by mako poisoning._

Setting down his pen, he pushed the button on his desk to summon his assistant.


	2. Galvinisation

Mako Sulphide

by Firefly99

Chapter 2

* * *

Rebecca Ramsey was a young, thin woman, with pale brown hair the colour of milky tea and huge faint grey eyes that appeared permanently startled. Her pale skin and tiny hands, combined with her slight frame, made her appear almost childlike. Hojo had learned from Tseng's file that the woman was smarter than she looked. This was the girl who had cloned her first animal, a bluebottle, at the age of nine, who had built a small, fully-functional Guardroid from plans hacked off the Shinra Company Intranet – there was potential there, yet she had so far never achieved anything of any real note.

She was also very quiet, which Hojo knew he would like. It kept her out from under his feet.

She gazed across at him, fiddling with the buttons on her lab coat as she spoke.

"Professor…?"

Hojo allowed himself a smile.

"Ah. Ms Ramsey. It's a simple job for you today," he said, lifting himself up from the table. "Oversee the experiment I am about to perform, and record the process, any difficulties we come across, how we solved those, and our results."

Rebecca glanced nervously across at the cylinders in the corner. There was a flash of sudden movement from within one, but the blurred glass made it impossible to detect what it was.

"What…what will I be recording Professor…sir?"

Hojo wondered over to the tanks, his eyes gleaming.

"I have two specimens, referred to for the purpose of this experiment as A – he's the control, on the left – and B – the project, on the right, here. Our pla – "

"Project?"

Hojo looked down at her. _Skinny little thing. Has she ever eaten anything? She doesn't look healthy._

"A second Sephiroth, my dear," Hojo said, smiling at her in a way he hoped was patronising. "I'm sure someone of your intelligence could have figured that one out."

Rebecca stared down at her battered shoes. Once upon a time they had been patent black.

"I'm sorry, Professor…Professor-sir."

"Anyway," Hojo continued, "our current plan is to check to see if the specimen is actually responding to Jenova – there have been many records of SOLDIERs and such hearing 'voices'. Some of them are responses to mako poisoning, which can result in schizophrenia and various other forms of psychosis, but there are some who seem to display…contact with Jenova. It's difficult to tell which."

"Jenova…?"

Hojo rolled his eyes. "Moron. Didn't anyone give you a briefing?"

"No. That was…um, that was your job, although…I don't want to seem cheeky or…well, you know."

Hojo smiled. It was sort of cute, in a pathetic kind of way. Poor girl's nerves were shot to pieces.

"Well, this experiment should serve as a briefing."

"I…I understand, Professor-sir."

_Professor-sir. She's desperate not to upset me. This could be fun._

Hojo dumped a pile of papers in her hands. Rebecca noticed the letterhead – _EXPERIMENT REPORT_.

"Your job, if you choose to do so – " Hojo started, then realised how strange that sounded. He carried on, in a self-mocking tone of voice, desperate to get a laugh out of this tense young woman. "Your mission, if you choose to accept it…" No response. He sighed. "Well, you have to note down everything the specimen says while I interrogate him. And cheer up. Try and spread a little sunshine. There isn't much down here."

"…Sunshine?"

"Yes. At the moment you're about as bright as a small black hole. Smile."

It wasn't working. Her huge eyes stared back at him harder, wide and round, like a deer caught in headlights. It was a last-ditch idea, but Hojo decided to show her something beautiful. Something amazing. It might get her ready for the experiment. Make her easier to work with. At the moment it felt like co-operating with a brick.

He took her shoulder. She flinched.

"Calm down, and peer in," he said. "Look closely. Specimen B is inside that tank."

The assistant leant into the artificial glass and started inside. A pair of surreally blue eyes jerked up to meet hers in a flash of movement. Rebecca jumped.

_It's…he never said it was a human…_

Hojo touched her shoulder again. He was smiling. "Don't be afraid."

She peered in through the mako-frost patterns on the cylinder. He was human. Definitely. He was in no way grotesque, deformed, monstrous, but somehow the familiar human features made her more frightened than anything else could have done.

"That's him," the professor purred into her ear. "Specimen B. Isn't he beautiful?"

Rebecca had been warned about this – the very disgruntled, recently-sacked laboratory assistant had told her. He'd said that Hojo fell in love with each and every one of his specimens, although not in the traditional way – not even a physical way. It was an obsessive emotion, so close to love that it was almost indistinguishable.

_It's hard to explain,_ he'd said.

Rebecca had thought he was pulling her leg.

"Ms. Ramsey? Isn't he?"

"…Yes…" she agreed. To her, he looked emaciated. Pale, unwell…it was as if the very lifeforce had been drained out of him and replaced with something else, something inorganic. He…he should have been out of that cylinder and in the world beyond. Living like a human, not a doll or a machine.

She imagined him on a hill somewhere pretty, like near Kalm, dressed in the latest Midgar fashion, sitting beside a lovely young woman and laughing with her. The sunlight struck his blond hair in such a way to make it gleam like raw gold, his too-pale skin tanning slightly in the sun, happy to just be human without any of this nonsense.

He looked beautiful there. But here, in the cylinder, devoid of any real life or energy, he did not.

"Wake him up," Hojo said. "The button's on the front, there. Do it."

_Responding to the touch of a button. Just like a puppet. A video game. A toy, Hojo._

Rebecca swallowed, and hit the button on the control panel.

The effect was instant.

A charge of five thousand volts flashed down the slender cable wired into his spine. The lights dimmed and flickered, reminding Rebecca of the thunderstorm that bought Frankenstein to life. The specimen screamed, a horrible, blood-curdling scream that made Rebecca want to scream, too.

She wondered how Hojo could live with this.

"…Who are you?" the specimen said, a clear film stretching between his lips as he opened his mouth. His voice was deep, very soft, wracked with tiredness and pain.

"Who, me?" asked Rebecca. The specimen closed his eyes. Rebecca took it for a yes. She continued with a broad, faked smile, as if she was talking to a small child or frightened animal. _Just pretend he's not a human. _"I'm Rebecca. Rebecca Ramsey, and I work for Hojo. I'm his assistant. Nice to meet you."

The honey-coated words felt unnatural passing her lips. They almost hurt to say. She really wanted to throw back her head and _SCREAM SCREAM SCREAM – _

"I'm not a specimen. Not a number."

The specimen had spoken again. He was staring intently at her. He had eyes the colour of copper sulphate that seemed to stare right through her to the bottles of chemicals behind her, as if she wasn't there, as if she were a ghost…

"Really? What are you, then?" she said, in that same overly, bitterly cheerful voice, as if she was reading lines of dialogue from a children's book.

"I'm human. Not for much longer, but I'm human for now."

"Human, are you? What's your name?"

"Cloud."

"I'm sorry. I didn't hear. Claude, was it?"

"No. Cloud," the specimen corrected. "Cloud. Like in the sky. You don't see much sky down here. In here. I want to see sky again…out…"

_He's starting to rave. Hojo warned me that he was delusional. He must be. No-one's called Cloud._

"So. Cloud, then. Have you had a nice sleep?"

"…I haven't slept. Don't sleep. Not unless she sings. Tired."

Hojo barged past Rebecca and pressed his nose flat against the front of the tank. Rebecca let out a cry.

"What was that? 'She sings'. Who is 'she', Specimen B?"

"…Hojo."

"Yes. That's me. Now who is she?"

"Hojo," the specimen repeated, his eyes fixed on the scientist's. There was something about them that was strong…something piercing…something powerful. Perhaps that was Hojo's doing. Perhaps Hojo had painted that look onto the back of the specimen's eyes. "Hojo. Why are you doing this? There's no point. There's…" The specimen paused, taking a deep breath, speaking requiring just a little too much energy. "There's no reason. I don't know how…how you can live…I'm not the only one, there's others, too…you've made them…us…all suffer…"

Hojo rolled his eyes, rapping irritably on the tank with a fingertip. "Oh, for God's sake."

"…I can't stand it. Neither can Zack…I want freedom..."

"Specimen. You have…You told me that you've always wanted to be strong. Since you were a child. I can make you the strongest person who ever lived. I can make you stronger than _him_, Specimen."

The specimen's tired copper sulphate eyes shot wide. "_Him? _Sephiroth?"

"Yes. Now tell me about 'her'."

That was Hojo. Always to the point.

"…No."

The young specimen sounded startlingly petulant, something like strength coming from inside from somewhere where Hojo couldn't have cut it away with a scalpel. Rebecca felt her eyes burn.

"You know," Hojo said, chuckling slightly, "you could have come up with a lie or something to throw me off my track. Perhaps you could have fooled me. Now I'm sure that you're hiding something."

The specimen lowered his head. His hair had been bleached and discoloured slightly by the mako oxide – it seemed pale yellow rather than blonde. His skin…it was so _grey_…

Hojo adjusted his glasses. "I performed lots of CAT scans on you. They said you had excellent abilities when it came to logic and logical perception. Your mind obviously isn't working at full strength today, Specimen."

He glanced over at Rebecca, to see if she had found the joke funny. She didn't respond.

With a sigh, Hojo's fingers found the Shock button.

It had been almost seven hundred years ago when a man had first documented what electricity did to muscles – he had been studying frogs, and accidentally ran a current through one, and found it seemed to come back to life. Interesting story, really. At least Hojo thought so.

The specimen couldn't help it. He convulsed violently like a giant frog's leg, and he screamed. The mako oxide, denser than air, deadened the sound. It was surreal, watching this man in so much pain –

Rebecca couldn't speak. She was watching the suffering with an unhealthy interest, but he brain told her she needed to feel sympathy. She had a sense of how wrong this all was…but no sympathy. It was an odd sort of void inside her chest that echoed with the screams –

– and it was over. The specimen sunk to the floor of the cylinder with a weak groan.

But wasn't the mako oxide supposed to support him?

"I'm going to filter out the gas so I can open the cylinder," Hojo explained. "The shock was to tighten up his muscles. It's easier to move him if he's nice and tense."

He was smiling. He was passionate about his work.

"What? You're going to do something else to him? Cut him open?"

Hojo turned to her. "Not yet. I have some routine cell substitution later on that will involve cutting him open, but not for this. I just want to make him tell us more."

"Why…why this, though? I mean – "

"Listen, I don't like hurting my specimens either. It causes unnecessary traumas and such…but if it's for an experiment, I can hardly be held responsible for my actions, can I? Listen. He's very petulantly avoiding my questions. I have to make him talk somehow, now don't I?"

Rebecca nodded. That, at least, sounded reasonable.

With a smile, Hojo pushed a second button. The rubber-lined hatch on the front of the cylinder opened, splitting with a neat hiss and a small wisp of mako oxide.

"Help me take him to the table, Ms. Ramsey."

**

* * *

**

"Please…" the specimen said, his eyes shining up like a little child's. "I want to be human. I don't want to be like Sephiroth…"

Rebecca looked down at the young specimen – no, man. He was human, she reminded herself. Like her. She couldn't start thinking like Hojo.

Somehow, the man appeared so childlike, so much younger than he really was. Had the mako…had it damaged him somehow? Messed up his brain?

"I'm not going to hurt you, Speci – um, Cloud," Rebecca said. "All I have to do is clean you off. Wipe those nasty mako crystals off your eyelashes. Will that be alright?"

The specimen gazed up at her again. His expression didn't change as she reached towards his face with the gauzy cloth. With some relief, she began to clean off his face. The specimen obediently shut his blue eyes as she slowly and carefully removed each of the tiny micromaterium from his face and lashes.

"If…if you hate Hojo so much, why don't you get angry?" Rebecca asked him softly, sliding a large, stubborn crystal from his eyelashes with her thumb and forefinger.

"I can't. Too…weak."

_The young man looks completely awful,_ thought Rebecca. His hair looked sickly yellow. His skin seemed like paper…

"Besides…that's his job."

Rebecca blinked. "You're willing to let it slide because it's Hojo's job?"

"No. I meant…I meant Zack gets angry. Zack does things. I've always been the tagalong."

She stroked the hair off his forehead, a sudden suppressed wave of sympathy pouring over her. He seemed fragile. Confused. Controlled…

Hojo looked at the girl and sighed.

"Grow up," he told her. She backed away from the specimen obediently. _This is my best opportunity. I can't lose my job yet. I'm too young. I haven't even been working here a day…_

"Anyway. The specimen…he's almost like a drug addict," Hojo explained, carefully drawing a tiny amount of green fluid into a sterile syringe from a sealed vial. "The initial 'mako high', when the Jenova respiration rate is at its highest, leaves him very delusional; but without mako, he is weak. He is at his best a little while after the shot has been administered."

Rebecca drew in a breath, and touched the specimen's forehead again in a way she hoped he would find soothing.

"Hojo's going to give you a little injection now – "

"– no, please…Hojo, no…"

"– so try to relax," Rebecca said. _Keep professional. Keep your job._ Her heart in her mouth, she began to swab the specimen's arm with alcohol.

Hojo gave her a glare. "Ms. Ramsey, please stop talking to the specimen. Don't go soft on me. It's getting annoying. And make sure he's correctly restrained. We don't want him going on a mako trip and running around killing us all."

_Could he really do that?_

Rebecca tested the wrist clamps.

"Yeah."

"Tight, but not cutting off the blood flow?"

"Yeah."

"Don't…don't let him do this, Becky…"the specimen said, desperate.

_Becky._

"You remembered my name?"

"You speak to me. Help me –"

"Back away from him," Hojo commanded.

Rebecca sighed at him, then turned to the specimen.

"…Sorry," she choked.

Then she backed away.

Hojo stepped into the space she had left, and pulled the skin taut on the specimen's arm where Rebecca had swabbed it.

The specimen did not scream.

The iridium-tipped needle, sharp as a nettle sting, slowly eased beneath the specimen's grey skin, slipping through like a needle through cotton. A single tear from the specimen's eye rolled down, cutting a shining path around an angular cheekbone.

Hojo's concentration was immense as he gently eased the stinging green fluid beneath the specimen's skin. Rebecca could feel her heartbeat counting time –

_One…two…three…_

Her heart beat thirty painful times before the needle was withdrawn.

Hojo looked at her. "You look whiter than the specimen, Ms. Ramsey. It'll take ten minutes for the mako to take effect. Now all we have to do," he breezed, glancing at his watch, "is wait."

* * *

_Firefly's feelings (or Why I Wrote This Travesty)_

Creation of Mako Sulphide part 1:

This fic is written entirely in a small yellow notebook. In rows and rows and rows of my dreadful, dreadful handwriting.

So, you know, you're not supposed to get writer's block with something you already had entirely written out.

Eh well. Anything's possible for me.

As for the OC attack – I invented Rebecca for a bit part, since I wanted this fic to be all about Hojo. However, when I decided to put Rebecca back in her little metal box she refused, and ended up being one of the two main characters in the fic.

I don't even have control over my own characters, dammit.

And before you ask – NO, she's not based on me – NO, I'm not called Rebecca Ramsey – NO, I do not know anyone called Rebecca Ramsey – NO, she's not based on one of my friends – NO, she does not have magic/psychic/super powers – NO, she's not a Cetra or a Sephiroth clone and NO NO NO she does NOT get off with Zack/Cloud/Hojo.

Really. Trust me. Would I lie to you?


	3. Catalyst

Mako Sulphide

by Firefly99

Chapter Three

**

* * *

**

"Mum," the specimen said. "Mum, please don't worry. Don't. I can make First Class. Easily, and I've always wanted…It's my big chance…"

The specimen was now delusional. He'd fully absorbed the mako into his bloodstream; his eyes were two little shocks of bright green phosphor in the middle of his grey face. Even the back of the pupil, fully dilated, was starting to glow. That meant that he'd had at least the lethal dose of mako. For a normal human, at any rate.

Rebecca was possibly even paler than the specimen, taking down everything the specimen said with intense deliberation. _This is stupid. The test hasn't even begun yet. All this data will be irrelevant._

…_Why am I thinking about the test?_

She continued to write what the specimen said.

_It's my big chance; you know I want to be like Sephiroth. Please let me go there, I promised her I'd make it big. I can't break a promise. We have to hurry. The train's going to leave. _

Rebecca decided she hated her job.

She had to keep it though, she thought, penning the specimen's words down, divorced from them. This was the best job she was likely to get.

Scientific Engineering department lab assistant. Good hours. Good pay. Only three days a week, although you'd have to cover if anyone else was off sick. Chance to be promoted. You could even, with Professor Hojo's consent, she was told, eventually ascend as high as Deputy Head of the Science Department if you worked hard for a good couple of years.

It seemed perfect. It was perfect. She'd wanted to be a scientist ever since she was small.

_It's perfect! It's perfect for me; you know how much I've wanted to join SOLDIER, ever since I was small._

"Cloud…" she muttered. In response, the specimen shut his eyes.

"…She's singing to me again."

Hojo's ears pricked.

"What, Specimen? What is she singing?"

The specimen smiled.

"…Dad? You're dead. You can't be here. I saw you when you were dead. When I was only little."

Hojo was beginning to lose patience, Rebecca noted, watching him irritably force the glasses further up the bridge of his nose.

"Specimen…I am not your father –"

" – You scared me, Dad. I thought you were asleep, until I felt how cold you were. I still remember how scared I was. You'd better apologise for scaring me like that."

"Specimen – "

"Say sorry."

"Listen to me. I'm not your father. You're just hallucinating – the spy neurones that read your thoughts and relay them to the other Jenova cells in your body are overdosing on the mako, and sending mismatched messages. It's unpleasant, but I'm sure you can – "

" – She's singing a serenade."

Hojo turned to Rebecca. "Are you getting all of this down, Ms. Ramsey?"

"Yes."

"A…serenade. Interesting. A romantic serenade?"

"Yes," the specimen replied, his far-too-wide eyes gazing up at Hojo intensely. "The angel loves me." He continued to speak in a strange, dull sing-song. Rebecca shivered.

"She calls to me. All the time. I can feel her calling. The mako makes her louder. I can hear her, and I want to go to her, because I know she loves me…"

The assistant bit her lip, tasting hot metal as it began to bleed.

"She protects me, like my mother; understands me, like a sister; and adores me, like a lover…She's all of them at once…" the specimen continued. "I only sleep when she sings her lullaby…"

Rebecca swallowed. "A lullaby?"

"There's…so many thousands of lights – like stars – "

"A lullaby?" Hojo asked.

The specimen smiled, and spoke.

"Do you remember that old song?" He began to sing it, softly. "Nibelheim is burning down, burning down, burning down…" He gave a sickly laugh.

"Specimen. I think I'll soon be losing my patience, so please – "

"_Veni, veni venias. Ne me mori faccias_."

Rebecca blinked.

"Cetran?"

_Come come, o come._

_Do not let me die._

"Does she sing that to you?"

"Yes."

"Do you know what those words mean?"

"No. But they make me feel better…because she's really sad. I don't know why. Maybe she misses me…"

"Do you think that this…this _angel_…controls you?" Hojo asked, crouching down beside the specimen and speaking to him like a little child.

"Can't you see him? He's walking through the fire! He's not…why isn't he burning? Is he a god? Why can't he be hurt – "

"Answer me, useless specimen!" the scientist roared, finally losing his temper.

The specimen's head rose, the rest of his body restrained by the clamps.

"_You…you idiot man. Shouting will not solve anything!_"

The specimen's voice lowered in pitch, became rich with strength, power, raw dominance.

Hojo grinned at the fire in the specimen's eyes.

"Rebecca?"

"…Yes?"

"I think we can safely say the results of our experiment were positive. Jenova is making him into a vessel. Did you see that?"

"Yes."

"Then write it down, for God's sake!"

He was excited. He wasn't far off jumping around the lab like a little child. He bounded over to the specimen, laid his hand on his pale forehead, and punched the air.

Victory.

"This is it! I knew it would happen! I knew it!"

Rebecca swallowed nervously. "But…but you…why is the result so good? Why's it so important?"

"Why's it so important?" repeated Hojo, in shock. "This means he's on the road to becoming a second Sephiroth!"

"Yes?"

"Why do you think Sephiroth was so strong? He was the only Jenova cell-enriched creature to actually form a symbiotic relationship with her consciousness, rather than just her cells."

"Her cells?"

"His weak, human cells were slowly replaced with Jenova cells, naturally, inside his body. We call that cell substitution – it's the reason SOLDIERs have such powerful muscles, why they're so smart. The human cells are flawed, but Jenova cells of the same kind can replace them. For instance, SOLDIERs have roughly fifty per cent Jenova muscle tissue and fifty per cent of their original muscle tissue."

"But…won't the body reject the foreign cells?"

Hojo groaned. "What have they been teaching you, Ms. Ramsey? Jenova cells can change their genetic fingerprint to fit in with their surroundings. The human cells don't pick anything up."

"So…how much of this specimen is…is Jenova, then?"

"What? In his entire body? About twenty, twenty-five per cent. We're aiming to get it up to forty-two per cent by next year. But I'm getting off the subject." Hojo sighed, and clasped his hands in front of him. "If he's displaying signs of Jenova becoming integrated into his consciousness, then he's halfway to symbiosis. He's halfway to becoming Sephiroth II." He grinned uselessly again, his eyes shining like a child who'd just been told their birthday was tomorrow. "I have good feelings about the completion of this project. It's already gearing up to be a marvellous, marvellous success."

**

* * *

**

The other man was watching her, Rebecca thought.

She was pressed against the cylinder of the control. He was still sleepy, but awake. His eyes were blue as well, she noted – but a grey-blue like a cold Junon sea. Not the weird toxic blue of copper sulphate.

He was very handsome, too. He had dramatic, raven-black hair frosted with an intense halo of mako crystals, a strong, stubborn jaw and a set to his face that looked like he used to be forever smiling. He wasn't smiling now, though. He was gazing right at her.

"Sciencebitch," he growled. "What the hell are you gonna do to him…?"

Rebecca tried to look him in the eye, but found she couldn't. "I…It's my job. I have to do it."

"Why don't you just quit, then?" the control asked, a wicked, angry, dark grin spreading across his face. "Why don't you quit? Do you enjoy it? Making people suffer? Making my best friend suffer?"

_Why _don't_ I quit?_

Rebecca turned her head. "Hojo. This specimen here…the control, you said…he's getting a little mouthy…"

"Well? Sedate him, then," Hojo suggested, patronisingly, then turned back to his paperwork. "Ms. Ramsey, your handwriting is dreadful…"

"Sorry." She looked back at the control. He was stripped of all human dignity. He was caged. He was naked. He still looked in control of the situation. He touched the glass in front of her face.

"You gonna do it? You gonna do what he says?"

There it was. The tranquiliser button.

"If you do it, sciencebitch, I'm gonna know you enjoy it." His gaze bore down on her, angry, cynical…

She pressed the button, and crossed over to Hojo, hearing the control's anaemic groan as he tried to resist the sedative.

"Hmm. The control is very annoying. He's been driving me crazy for the last year. I'm sorry you had to deal with him."

"Yeah," Rebecca said, eyes fixed on her feet.

"Anyway. I've finished all the paperwork. I'm ready to start on that cell substitution task I briefed you in earlier."

"Yeah."

"Just obey my instructions for now. You're a novice, after all."

"Yeah."

_Was the control right? Do I enjoy working here? How can I prove him wrong?_

…_By saving _him_, of course._

"Don't worry, I'll keep them nice and simple. I'm not sure what state the Shinra Educational Board is in when it comes to teaching science, so I don't know what counts as an expert any more…"

_Becky. The specimen calls me Becky, just like my brother. God, I hate being called Becky…_

"Something wrong?" Hojo asked. "You don't seem to be paying any attention."

"No. Not…not really."

Hojo was still staring at her. She decided to continue.

"Oh, I…didn't get a lot of sleep last night," she lied, giving a nervous chuckle. Hojo seemed to buy it.

"Sleep is for the weak, Ms. Ramsey."

"It's also for the really tired. Which I am."

Hojo laughed at that, then smiled.

"Ok. Just…here's the mako sulphide cylinder – " he dropped it in her hands, " – and the specimen's on the table. It shouldn't take a genius to figure out what I want you to do to him."

**

* * *

**

She felt really awkward standing there. With his eyes gazing up at her, all blue, so wickedly poisonous…God, it was awkward.

_Perhaps the control was right. Perhaps I just don't have what it takes to quit this job._

She had to buy some more time. She couldn't do it. Not right now.

"Can…can you explain this operation to me, Professor-sir?"

"For the fifth time," Hojo moaned, bored, "we are going to graft strings of Jenova striped muscle tissue into the specimen's abdomen."

"Wasn't there something else?"

"After the operation," Hojo continued, "we are going to perform MIT on the specimen."

"Mitt?"

"MIT. Mako Irradiation Therapy. What were they teaching you in school?"

"And the point of all of this –"

" – is to cause the Jenova cells to begin the cell substitution process and replace his own human cells, Ms. Ramsey. How many times need I go through it?"

Rebecca swallowed. She was stalling for time. Hojo knew it as well as she did. And she wasn't doing it very well.

"Why aren't you listening to me?" Hojo asked her.

"I told you, I didn't get a lot of sleep last night," Rebecca repeated. Too late she realised how petulant it sounded.

"Are you cheeking me, Ms. Ramsey?" the scientist asked her, his magnesium-grey eyes fixed on hers.

"Not intentionally, Professor-sir," she joked weakly, forcing a chuckle.

Hojo chuckled too.

"Good. You have a sense of humour, Ms. Ramsey. You don't often see that in this profession."

"Thank you," Rebecca nodded, doing her best to sound grateful rather than arrogant. Hojo smiled at her, then fixed her with a sudden glare.

"Now that's over with, anaesthetise the damned specimen!" he growled. "Or do you want to lose your job?"

"Oh…" _I can't lose my job I can't I can't…_

"I'm sorry…sorry, really sorry, Professor-sir," Rebecca responded obediently. But the specimen's eyes were still fixed on hers, glaring through her as if she wasn't there, just like when she first woke him up…

"…Becky?"

_Shut…shut up. My name's not Becky…Only my brother is allowed to call me Becky…and I hate it even then. Don't call me Becky…_

She tried to choke back the lump in her throat. Her eyes were burning. _Why oh why goddammit! Why a human! My job! I want this job so much and Hojo only tries to make me turn a human into a monster…What does he have against me, huh?_

She stared down at him. Why did he look beautiful now all of a sudden? Why couldn't he have waited until after the procedure?

She kept staring and he kept staring back –

"Hojo. What's the status on the latest project?"

Hojo shot up with surprise, doing his best to turn to face the source of the voice. _Well, victory, _thought Rebecca._ Saved by the doorbell._

"Oh sh –" the scientist began to curse, but paused. "Um…uh, I didn't see you there. How long have you been here?"

It was Tseng, leaning in the door-frame, looking thoroughly fed up with the whole situation.

Tseng was with the Shinra Manufacturing Department of Administrative Research. The SMDAR's job was to scout for new members of SOLDIER, and to fill any vacancies going in important positions. Rebecca had heard rumours – kidnap, murder – but she wasn't sure she believed them. After all, Tseng had seemed like a nice enough person, if a little cold and sardonic. Besides, if the SMDAR was so good at all of that dirty stuff, why were so many people convinced? Surely no-one'd know if they were so covert?

Hojo, however, did believe the rumours. He knew they were true. After all, the SMDAR was his own little specimen retrieval squad. Trying to gather up the citizens of Nibelheim was difficult, and it would have been harder without the Turks' help. Although Hojo may have had Jenova cells within him, the cell substitution process…didn't seem to be working very well. Her abilities had not yet manifested.  
He injected more cells into himself every night, like an addict. God knows what he'd be capable of when the cell substitution began.

Tseng seemed Gongagan-Wutaian, dark hair, eyes, and skin – fairly handsome, in a cold, unresponsive sort of way. His ponytailed hair was gelled carefully back from his square hairline, revealing a small mole in the centre of his forehead. His nose was long and straight, his cheekbones almost skeletally angular, and his mouth thin-lipped and stern. It wasn't his natural appearance. All members of the SMDAR change their looks with the help of plastic surgery once every six or seven years.

Hojo vaguely remembered that about four years ago Tseng had been very Nibel-looking with sandy-gold hair, wide blue eyes and pale skin. It hadn't suited the stolid man one bit.

"You forgot about the appointment, didn't you?" Tseng asked, fixing Hojo with a harsh glare.

Hojo had. But he wasn't about to admit that.

"You were supposed to arrive at half six," Hojo said, carefully, "and you were a little late. I assumed you weren't coming."

Tseng checked his watch. "Three minutes late, Professor Hojo."

"Well, you normally arrive on the dot," Hojo breezed. It was true. Tseng rolled his eyes.

"In other words, you did forget, but you don't want to admit it."

"Yep!" Hojo smiled, then turned to look at Rebecca. She was standing over the Specimen, with a definite fondness in her eyes. Hojo wasn't blind – he could tell Rebecca pitied him.

_She's too weak,_ Hojo thought. _Foolish. You can't survive long if you see every specimen as a human. She should be remembering that as long as he's inside this laboratory he's only a Homo sapiens. Besides, I created his life, so he's mine. When I found him, he was dead. But I managed to fix him, grafting fresh skin over the cut on his abdomen, filling his lungs full of constantly regenerating J-cells, and replacing the three snapped ribs with ribs from Specimen Omega before…the transformation. And then, when he was ready and fully prepared and beautiful I pumped him full of mako – several times the lethal dose. And gloriously, he was resurrected. It was proof, proof that mako is the essence of life._

_But I brought that specimen back to life. I gave him new life. If it wasn't for me, he'd be dead. So there is nothing wrong with this. No reason for there to be any controversy._

"Ms. Ramsey," Hojo groaned. "Get over here. Leave your damn pet alone for five seconds."

"Is she useful?" Tseng asked. Tseng's quizzes were legendary. Every single person who he administrated was like one of his children. He would go on about them, argue about them, tempt the employer to say something bad about their charge. That invariably led to disaster.

"Yep. She's useful. Very intelligent. Very willing to learn," the scientist replied. No point talking about her issues with the project. Tseng couldn't stand to hear anyone talk foul of his progedies.

"Bit young, though?" the SMDAR quizzed.

"Ninteen. Yep, I suppose, but she's old enough to handle herself," Hojo replied, coolly. "But, anyway. Why was it so vital you came along?"

Tseng spoke calmly. "I need a status report on the specimen. This assistant of yours can remain in here."

In any other situation, Hojo would have doubted her ability to look after the specimen. But saying that, out loud, in front of Tseng…

"Start the operation while I'm gone," Hojo ordered her, and exited.

The door closed with a soft click.

Then silence.

Rebecca let out a breath experimentally.

"Specimen," she said.

"…That's Cloud," the specimen responded. "Call me Cloud."

"You sound good," she ventured. It was true – his voice, although still weak, sounded more solid, more emotive. He looked better as well – his skin had lost some of the greyness.

"I feel better."

Rebecca hesitated. "Hojo said that you were at your best a little while after receiving an injection."

"He could be right. He's smart. That makes everything harder."

"Why…why don't you complain?" Rebecca asked him. "Why don't you scream?"

"I've already told you. That's Zack's job."

"Zack?"

"The closest friend I've ever had in my life."

She looked at him.

"Sp – Cloud," she mumbled, mentally cursing her slip of the tongue, "I…I want to help you. I have to help you. I won't be able to live with myself unless I do something. I'm going to get you out – "

The specimen shook his head. "Forget it. Zack's already tried."

Rebecca glanced over at the tank in the corner. "Is that…"

"That's Zack," the specimen said, his voice cutting. "Specimen ID 24680 (Z). He's tried to get out so many times. There's security footage and they've implanted trackers in us, so even if we do get out they'll catch us. There's nothing we can do."

The specimen took a huge gulp of air after saying that.

"Tracking devices?"

"I don't know what. Or where. I only know they're in us. Hojo said so."

His voice was beginning to weaken.

"I don't want to go to her," the specimen whispered, eyes heavy. "I don't…She wants me to go to her, but I don't want to…"

"Specim –"

"That's Cloud. I'm a human. I know that's hard to grasp for someone like you. But I'm a human."

Rebecca winced. "Sorry. Cloud."

"What?"

"I've…got an idea. I can help you out."

The specimen's eyes shot wide. "You…Can you?"

"Yes," she nodded. "I'll have to operate on you. And I'll have to do it quickly. I don't know if we have enough time. But it's worth a try."

The specimen smiled a little. His eyes glowed a little brighter.

"Can you…you have to help me, Becky. Please?"

Rebecca smiled down at him.

"Anytime, Cloud."

For a moment, gazing down at him, she wondered what he'd been through. He looked…he looked very like her brother, how he'd looked when he was about seventeen. What would it be like if this wasn't Cloud or whoever – what would it have been like for her brother? What if it had been her brother in his place?

For the first time, she honestly felt the wrongness of everything Hojo was doing. She'd always known it was wrong…but now she felt it and understood it.

And here was her chance to stop it.

"Cloud," she ordered. "There isn't a lot of time! Quickly. I'll hold the cylinder over your face. When I loosen the valve and you can hear gas hissing, I want you to take a really big deep breath, like – like you're six, and it's your birthday, and you're preparing to blow out your candles. Think about your sixth birthday, OK?" She pressed the mask tightly over his mouth and nose. "Ready?"

The barest of nods.

"Now, S – Cloud! Now!" she yelled, twisting the wheel to release the valve. The specimen shut his eyes, taking the biggest breath he could.

Then he passed out.

It took Rebecca a little while to shut off the gas. Her hands were shaking too much – she couldn't keep them under control enough to put on the latex gloves, and it was amazing she managed in the end.

_What I'm doing is stupid._

She put on the cloth mask. There wasn't enough time for any other precautions. Thankfully, no matter how much your hands are shaking, antiseptic spray is easy to handle.

She sprinted across to the cell refrigeration unit, feeling her heart pound in her ears as she went flying over a life support cable, trying her best to regain her balance.

_What I'm doing is the stupidest thing I've ever done._

Glancing over into the condensation-covered tubes that held the precious cargo of cells, she muttered a prayer to every deity she'd ever heard about, although she'd never believed in a single one. Not even when she was little – her mother had told her the story of some god who went thundering over rainbows to cross between the world of gods and the world of men, and she'd told her that everyone knew rainbows were made of light, so that was impossible.

_This is far too stupid to work._

She'd never come up with a plan this risky before. She didn't want to imagine how many possible ways this plan had of failing.


End file.
